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Few people have seen the ups and downs of startups more up close and personally than Kevin Rose, partner at Google Ventures and cofounder of Digg, the social news site that could have been Reddit but faded and is now trying for a comeback under new owner Betaworks. In an interview at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference this morning in San Francisco, Rose talked about his relatively new role as a venture capitalist.

Among the highlights: He said that he has helped speed up the way Google makes investments, that Google isn’t trying to lowball startups on valuations, and that he’s avoiding copycat startups (um, not to be too impolite, but like those dozens of companies in the conference’s demo hall?). Here’s what else he’s thinking about today, sometimes paraphrased:

Q: How has it been as a full-time venture capitalist?

A: I was doing angel investing for three or so years before joining Google Ventures. It was always a part-time thing, a casual investment every month or so. Now I’m seeing 10 or 15 companies a week. I always like seeing cool new ideas.

A: We’re absolutely not going out there and trying to lowball companies. Some companies are worth $15 million and others are worth $6 million or $8 million. I’m closing three YC deals, all three we took the terms straight up. Another one, we just saw too much risk, so we didn’t do the deal.

Q: A couple of companies I talked to said the due-diligence process is longer with Google Ventures.

A: I don’t know that we’re more strict about that. I took $200,000 from GV for my last startup, Milk. The diligence process was a little longer. But I’ve been working personally on streamlining that. We do $5 million to $10 million that absolutely take good due diligence, when you’re investing that much. I think we’re in a great place now.
I have nothing bad to say about Y Combinator. I’m investing in several of their companies. Nobody’s mad at anyone.

Q: What YC companies have you invested in?

A: We just closed on BufferBox, kiosks for people to get packages at, like Wal-Mart stores.

Q: Are there certain kinds of companies you like?

A: I’d be lying if I said I have this grand vision. When I see a company that’s really doing something disruptive, that gets my interest. I don’t want to do a Pinterest for cats. I’m more of a surgical investor. The only way to do that is to pare down the total number of deals you do. I may do 10-12 deals a year, but they’re companies I really believe in. …